Film Tackles Illegitimacy In Morocco

I don't make this point in the film, but Morocco reminds me of what I read about Victorian Britain, with housemaids falsely promised marriage by their employers, and families telling their pregnant daughters never to darken their doors again.

The politics and dynamics of family life are the stuff of legend and of literature. A new film currently in post-production examines one aspect of family life than can be considered taboo — illegitimacy.

Bastards: Sex and Single Mothers in Morocco follows the lives of a handful of mothers as they struggle to have their children — born out of wedlock — recognized by their fathers as well as the court system.

The film is the work of Deborah Perkin, a veteran filmmaker whose work as been broadcast on the BBC. Bastards has been filmed, but at the end of 2012 Perkin took to Kickstarter — a crowdsourcing site used to fund a variety of different projects — to raise the funding for the documentary’s post-production work.

She reached her goal of 10-thousand British pounds by New Year’s Eve.

A few days later Muslim Voices Managing Editor Rosemary Pennington had the chance to ask Perkin about the film.

Rosemary Pennington: I watched the Kickstarter video about this film, and it looks fascinating. How did you decide this was something you were going to document?

Deborah Perkin: I went on holiday to Morocco with my mother and we were impressed with the way women seemed to be engaged in society, more than in other Muslim countries we had visited, though we didn’t claim to be any sort of experts. When I got home I researched the position of women in Morocco and discovered the family law reforms of 2004 giving women a measure of equality.

Even though a lot of Moroccan women think the reforms don’t go far enough, it seemed like a very unusual step in the right direction and I wanted to make a film to celebrate this.

I remember interviewing the retired “Red Queen” of British politics, Barbara Castle, who as a Government Minister had got the Equal Pay Act passed in the UK in 1970. She wasn’t happy that it had gone far enough but said it was crucial just to get something on the statute books, and work up from there! So I started talking to Moroccan lawyers, and searching for a documentary subject.

RP: How did you find out about the plight of “bastards” in Morocco?

DP: In my search for a subject I quickly came across Aicha Chenna’s pioneering work for single mothers. She’s a national heroine in Morocco, and she had recently won the Opus Prize celebrating religion in social action, so there was press coverage about her and the plight of “bastards” in Morocco.

She’s determined that children shouldn’t suffer because their parents aren’t married, and wants them to be full members of Moroccan society, making a contribution. Her charity advises single mothers how to use the law to their advantage. Chenna has changed attitudes, which almost certainly helped to reform the law.

Compared with the West, the rights of Moroccan single mothers may be very narrow, but compared with other Muslim countries, they are amazingly broad. No woman is jailed or executed for breaking the family law.

RP: How difficult was this for you to film? How did you gain access to the lives of these women and their children?

DP: Good question. In any observational documentary, first of all you have to win people’s trust. Why should a charity like L’Association Solidarite Feminine open its casebook to a British film-maker without a lot of discussion first, and similarly why would the Ministry of Justice let me film in the courts of Agadir?

I explained what I just told you, that far from wanting to bash Morocco for its lack of women’s rights, I wanted to feature one of its most radical charities, and show the legal reforms in action. So that was the formal side.

Informally, I had a most wonderful welcome from the women themselves. I had expected 9 out of 10 single mothers to be camera-shy, given their social status as pariahs, but the opposite was true. Very few women refused to be filmed and most wanted to tell me their stories and laugh and cry with me.

It was a privilege to be allowed into their lives, and they seemed to enjoy the confessional nature of documentary making.

My Assistant Producer Nora Fakim speaks Arabic, and I don’t, so I couldn’t have understood anything without her, but it’s amazing how much communication can take place non-verbally. I think it also helped that Nora and I lived in a slummy part of Casablanca where the single mums live, and word got round that we were sharing a room, sleeping on two mattresses, in a house without a bathroom, cooking on a stove in the corridor and using the local hammam.

We certainly didn’t come across as pampered media types!

RP: Why should someone not of this culture care?

DP: Well, we are all human beings, living in a global village and we should take an interest in each other, and help where we can! Having said that, this isn’t a film that people “ought” to watch because it’s politically correct. Quite the opposite!

It’s closer to being a gritty court drama, or a soap opera, with women and men talking frankly about sex, money and marriage. It’s the stuff of everyone’s lives.

I’d also say that there are links to our culture too. You don’t have to go back too far in European history to find single mothers being stigmatised. The word bastard itself means illegitimate child but also carries the shocking sense of being an obnoxious person. The word says it all about the way children born out of wedlock used to be treated in Europe.

I don’t make this point in the film, but Morocco reminds me of what I read about Victorian Britain, with housemaids falsely promised marriage by their employers, and families telling their pregnant daughters never to darken their doors again.

RP: Who is the target audience of your film?

DP: Every filmmaker wants to say everyone! But of course it’s people who want to be entertained and moved to think about something they haven’t thought about before. I’ve made a lot of documentaries in over 25 years at the BBC, and however niche the subject appears to be, there is always something in it to appeal to a broad audience, something universal.

RP: I know your Kickstarter was to raise money for post-production – do you have a distributor for your documentary yet? Who are you hoping to work with so this is seen?

DP: I’ve lived in Cardiff, the capital of Wales since 1994, and I’m hoping that the Film Agency for Wales will help me with finishing funds. I am just putting in the application now, so I hope I don’t jinx it!

I am approaching distributors in the USA and Europe and of course I hope my alma mater the BBC will show it, and that it gets out in the Arab speaking world. If any Muslim Voices readers are documentary commissioners, please let me know!

You can find more about the film, as well as Perkin’s other work at her website: Deborah Perkin. You can watch the Kickstarter video Perkin created to generate post-production funding here.